The unbearable lightness of buying

ABSTRACT

Although marketers are increasingly asked to manage brands for the long term, it is difficult to do so when no clear picture exists of long-term brand buying. This study reports cumulative behavioural loyalty outcomes for 200 UK consumer-goods brands when observed in a five-year household panel of continuous reporters. We examine these brands in intervals from one to five years against NBD (Negative Binomial Distribution) model projections. Stationary brands attract over twice as many buyers in five years as they do in one. Of these buyers, 80% purchase the brand at a rate of once a year or less, yet contribute 40% to total sales, a Pareto ratio of just 60:20. For managers, this light buying is broadly predictable from NBD fittings to annual data, and implies a renewed emphasis on nudging the brand buying propensities of the whole market.

KEYWORDS:

• Brand performance
• brand loyalty
• heavy buyers
• NBD buying
• long-run marketing objectives
• Pareto share

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Kantar Worldpanel for data supply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Dawes

John Dawes is Professor of Marketing and an Associate Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia.  His research interests are pricing, buyer behaviour and brand loyalty.

Charles Graham

Charles Graham is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at London SouthBank University.  His research interests are in long-term behavioural loyalty modelling and competitive market structure.

Giang Trinh

Giang Trinh is an Associate Professor and Senior Researcher at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia.  His research interests include modelling consumer purchasing behaviour, brand competition, market structure, and price promotions

Byron Sharp

Byron Sharp is Professor of Marketing Science and the Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia.  His research interests include buyer behaviour, brand loyalty, advertising, media and the development of empirical generalisations.